


Nylon

by pesky_poltergeist



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: F/M, Wilderness Survival, cw animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pesky_poltergeist/pseuds/pesky_poltergeist
Summary: Jack woke to the high-pitched shriek of something scraping on thick nylon.He had to force his eyes open, better judgment fighting tooth and nail against the sweet promise of quiet rest. Sleep crusted his eyes. He brushed it away.It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t see anything—the waxing moon shone enough light into the tent to give everything that noisy, monochrome look, like an old photo covered in a thin layer of wax. The black shadows of locust leaves shook against the grainy gray ceiling of the tent.Scritch.
Relationships: Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Phic Phight!





	Nylon

**Author's Note:**

> Phic phight prompt from horseGhost here on AO3: Maddie and Jack learn a bit more about ghosts, but not through scientific study.

Jack woke to the high-pitched shriek of _something_ scraping on thick nylon.

He had to force his eyes open, better judgment fighting tooth and nail against the sweet promise of quiet rest. Sleep crusted his eyes. He brushed it away.

It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t see anything—the waxing moon shone enough light into the tent to give everything that noisy, monochrome look, like an old photo covered in a thin layer of wax. The black shadows of locust leaves shook against the grainy gray ceiling of the tent.

_Scritch._

In the leaves, Jack could barely make out the outline of—something. The tent nylon bowed gently under its touch. It dragged across the tent again, and Jack heard every shrill click of keratin scraping against woven plastic.

_Scritch._

Jack reached out to Maddie, silent. He grabbed her hand. There was a sharp intake of breath and a gentle squeeze of his hand. “Jack—”

“Shh,” he cut her off.

_Scritch._

Maddie lay stock still. The sound continued.

—and the sun was just barely past the horizon, outlining the snow-covered trees in the cold pink of an early winter dawn. Jack was sitting leaned against the base of a fir tree in his parka. Maddie was curled under his arm, asleep. Had he been asleep? He didn’t remember falling asleep. He didn’t remember waking.

The tent was nowhere in sight.

Jack shook Maddie gently. “Mads, wake up,” he said. She went ramrod straight and swung her head around to take in their surroundings. She slapped her cheeks to wake herself. “Something’s playing with us,” Jack said. “We need to move.”

A steely expression settled into Maddie’s eyes as she realized the gravity of their situation. She picked herself up off the ground. Jack cracked his neck and followed suit. He looked around them. The snowfall was fresh, untouched by their footprints. At first he thought it must have fallen while they slept, but a look at his coat told him that wasn’t the case. It was dry.

“I don’t have any weapons,” Maddie said. She picked up a sturdy branch and began plucking needles from the sides to create a makeshift staff.

Jack checked his pockets. Empty. “I don’t have any guns or snacks,” he said. “Any sign of the campsite?”

Maddie shook her head.

Jack considered finding something to use as a weapon, but decided against it. What good would it do him without any kind of anti-ecto coating? He couldn’t fight a ghost with his bare hands. He wished he’d slept in his hazmat suit, then at least he could punch a ghost. Sometimes he didn’t bother to take it off—why did this have to be one of the nights he did?

Maddie was sharpening the end of her staff—or spear, now. “What can I do?” he asked. She knew more about outdoor survival than he did. He wouldn’t pretend like he knew what to do.

“We need shelter. The temperature’s still dropping even though the sun’s rising,” Maddie said.

Jack nodded. Maddie shaded her eyes and peered at the sky, turned, and started walking what Jack thought was south. He fell in step behind her.

“This is a different forest,” Jack said. “Coniferous.”

“Do you think we’re in the Ghost Zone?” Maddie asked. She gave him a look—a special kind of look. The kind she only made with him, when she didn’t feel the need to keep up the perfect appearance of a strong, fearless mother for the kids. When she’d let him in, if only a little, to see what she was feeling. She was calm, not panicked, but nervous.

Jack took a couple deep breaths to calm himself. He couldn’t afford to think too deeply about what was happening to them. Panicking would only waste precious time they could use to figure out… whatever _this_ was.

“Sky’s not green,” Jack said, but he wasn’t sure it mattered.

They walked in companionable silence, only speaking to address observations like this was one of the experiments they ran in their basement. Maddie noted the sun hadn’t moved. Jack noted that there wasn’t any wildlife. Maddie noted that she wasn’t getting colder, despite the temperature. Jack concurred. So on and so forth.

They walked for hours while the sun stayed locked in a permanent state of dawn.

Jack glanced at his feet, then stopped. “Mads,” he said.

She turned to look at him, unmelting snow stuck on her nose and in her eyelashes. She had bags under her eyes. She looked tired. He felt tired, too.

“Look at the snow. There’s hoof prints,” he said. He knelt over and put his hand next to the tracks—they were about eight inches long. A monstrously big buck, then. His grandpa would’ve been excited to see such large tracks if this had been one of the hunting trips from his childhood. He wished it was. It’d be simpler.

Jack took the lead. Maddie knew wilderness survival, but Jack knew tracking. He followed the buck’s tracks until they ended in a thick patch of trees on dirt sheltered from the snow. He knelt again—a bent bush here, a gently gnawed branch there. He circled each track until he found a new mark, backtracking when he lost his lead.

They came upon the buck, enormous and white as the snow around them with antlers to match, accompanied by three inky-black does. They were drinking from a stream.

Neither Jack nor Maddie spoke. Were these ghosts? Animals that had been transplanted as they had? Either way, Jack didn’t want to go toe-to-toe with a buck of that size.

Barely a second had passed before the buck turned to them. It bowed its head in a nod and kicked its foot.

Jack glanced at Maddie—she was gripping her spear tightly, pose defensive. She was coiled, waiting to strike at the first hint of danger.

The buck’s ears perked, then flicked. He looked at the deer beside him. Then, one by one, they jumped impossibly far over the stream, then darted into the forest.

Maddie wrung the spear in her hands. “What was that?”

Jack shook his head. “No idea,” he said. “Should we follow them?”

Maddie cocked her head, then sighed. “Yes. We have no other leads.”

Jack edged down to the stream, careful not to slip and fall into the water. He offered his hands to Maddie and lifted her down to him. “Watch your step,” he said. She nodded and took a step onto a water-slicked rock, then jumped to a taller, drier one further into the stream. Jack followed.

A bird tweeted shrilly as they crossed.

When they reached the other side, Jack was glad to put his feet down on solid earth again, even if it was a bit muddy. This time, Maddie helped Jack up the side of the bank—his boots were intent on sticking in the mud. He climbed up without them while she scooted down to retrieve them.

Jack sat on the remains of a fallen tree while he laced up his boots again. His stomach growled, but he ignored it. They’d have to find food eventually, but they couldn’t afford to lose the deer’s tracks.

Maddie squeezed his shoulder gently. He patted her hand, then stood up.

He looked around him. There weren’t any deer tracks—not even in the mud where they’d seen them land. Ghosts, then. He sighed.

“No tracks,” he said.

Maddie nodded. “We’ll continue west, then,” she said, and she started in the opposite direction of the sun.

Jack shivered, brushed snow out of his eyes, and followed after her.

It was Maddie who stopped next. “The sun’s rising,” she said. He looked up—it was halfway overhead.

“Are we back?” he asked. Maddie shook her head. She didn’t know. They didn’t know anything.

They kept walking.

Slowly, very slowly, the world began to right itself.

The occasional birdcall became consistent. Leafless deciduous trees took the place of snowy evergreens. The ground cleared, revealing dead, yellow grass beneath.

Just as the sun was beginning to set, they came upon their campsite again.

It was a gruesome scene. A tree had fallen on their tent, but it had impaled a doe on its way down. She had long since bled out, blood frozen into the cold earth. Animals had scavenged what they could from the corpse. Their food had been ransacked as well, bent cans and empty bags strewn about the burnt out campfire.

Jack and Maddie didn’t speak as they recovered what they could from their camp, bagging up the rest to be disposed of back in civilization.

Jack couldn’t help but eye the doe. That could’ve been Maddie, a branch struck through her chest with snow on her eyelashes and stuck to her nose. It could’ve been him, too. If they’d been in the tent, their children would be orphans.

Jack walked to the fallen tree and began to push. Maddie took the other side. Together, they rolled it over.

The doe looked even worse without the trunk to hide her flattened chest cavity and spread entrails.

Jack gathered up branches with thick foliage and carefully laid them over the deer. Maddie put a ring of stones around them to hold them in place.

* * *

Jack reversed the van out of their parking spot, then wheeled around the corner. A park ranger was parked across the lane, blocking their way out. She waved at them. Jack rolled the window down.

“Boy am I glad to see you! That was a helluva storm. We’ve been looking for all our campers since yesterday. Had search parties out and everything. Not everyone got so lucky, I’m afraid to say. What’s your name so I can mark you off as found?”

* * *

When Jack and Maddie returned to Fenton Works, they hugged their kids a little tighter and a little longer.

They never told the kids what happened in the woods, but they were bright children. He didn’t doubt they noticed that Jack and Maddie’s experiments shifted from execution to containment.


End file.
